Waterbirds as bioindicators of wetland heavy metal pollution

Abstract

As highly developing urbanized and industrialized processes, wetland ecosystems are subject to natural and man-induced change through physical, chemical and energetic processes. Heavy metal pollution situation is more serious increasingly, water birds whose life history is in wetlands are at high risk both lethal and sub-lethal effects, as their body burdens increase. It is costly and time-consuming to determine environmental quality by examining concentrations of metals in very many organisms, thus indicator species and indicator tissues must be selected. Biological monitoring is thought to be satisfactory way to quantify heavy metal abundance and bioavailability. Waterbirds populations may serve as sentinel species for natural and man-made toxicological problems in the environment. We discussed the impacts of heavy metal polltion on the water birds in wetland ecosystems, and summaried the researches of waterbirds were used for bioindicators, especially in recent 10 years. As different parts of birds can be used to investigated the heavy metal pollution of wetland systems. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of them, as well as water birds as monitors of the wetland quality changes in this paper. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.